To Fight For by Phillip Hunter Page B

old man. That was something. That was pain, maybe the same as the pain I felt.
    I told him to fuck off. He looked at me like he suspected a trap of some kind. I turned away from him and went back to the car. I wiped the steering wheel, the gearstick, the handbrake, the door handles, and tossed the keys into a pile of sand.
    When I’d done that, I saw the kid was still there, staring at me.
    â€˜Fuck off,’ I said again.
    He was deflated now, the anger gone, the fear too. He had guts, I suppose. I had to admire that.
    â€˜I don’t get it.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Do you know who I am?’
    â€˜You just told me.’
    â€˜Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
    â€˜Yeah. Now go.’
    He wasn’t what I would’ve thought of as Marriot’s son. He had a plummy voice, like he’d gone to a public school. And there was no violence in him. There’d been anger, sure, but that had gone. Probably, it was because I’d been to see his mum and she must’ve called him and he’d panicked, thinking she was in danger.
    He started to leave, then stopped and turned back to me.
    â€˜I want to kill you,’ he said.
    â€˜Join the queue.’
    â€˜You killed my dad.’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    I was waiting for him to go. Then, I’d go too, in another direction. But he wasn’t budging. I stood and looked at him. He was skinny, and his clothes didn’t fit him well, as if he’d been bigger and had been ill. There were creases in his face that shouldn’t have been there. Yes, he’d felt pain. Maybe, he’d imagined coming face to face with his father’s killer, and exacting revenge. And now, failing, and yet still living, he didn’t know what to do.
    â€˜He was a good man,’ the boy said. ‘He loved me and my mum.’
    Now I was getting tired of him.
    â€˜Your dad was a cunt.’
    He came at me, head down, charging again, as he’d done in his car. I swatted him aside and he crashed into a stack of bricks. He tried to stand, and staggered and fell back to the ground, landing on his knees. He put his head down, so that it looked like he was trying to kiss the ground. I heard him sniffling. He wiped his eyes and stood and faced me. There were grazes on his hands and face, his jeans were torn at one knee, blood darkening the denim.
    â€˜You didn’t have to kill him,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
    I said, ‘He killed someone I knew.’
    I thought he’d get angry again, deny it all. But his shoulders dropped and his face turned to the ground. He wasn’t like me. He wasn’t a killer, an avenger. He wasn’t ruled by the rage that burned his blood, or by the murder that wrenched and twisted at his heart, darkening the blood with its darkness. He was just a kid who was the son of a man I’d killed, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
    He turned away. I think he knew what I was telling him was the truth. I think he just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
    â€˜Who was he?’ he was saying to the air. ‘The man he killed.’
    â€˜She.’
    â€˜Oh,’ he said. ‘Will you go after my mum?’
    â€˜I don’t care about your mum. Or you.’
    Now he started to walk away, but something came to me and I called after him. He stopped, but still wouldn’t look at me.
    â€˜Your old man,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t in it alone. There was someone else, a copper, called Glazer. Remember him?’
    Now he looked at me. I don’t think he’d heard my question. He said, ‘He loved me.’
    Then he was gone. I suppose I could’ve gone after him, shaken the information from him, if he even knew it. I could’ve done, but I only watched him walk away. I think I envied him. He’d tried and failed. And that was enough. He’d tried and failed and was back to his quiet, ordinary life. Christ, what I wouldn’t